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Will China Beat the United States Back to the Moon?
MarkWhittington writes "During an address on the space economy to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the start of the space age, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin made the assertion that China would beat the United States back to the Moon. 'Americans will not like it, but they will just have to not like it. I think we will see, as we have seen with China's introductory manned space flights so far, we will see again that nations look up to other nations that appear to be at the top of the technical pyramid, and they want to do deals with those nations. It's one of the things that made us the world's greatest economic power. So I think we'll be reinstructed in that lesson in the coming years and I hope that Americans will take that instruction positively and react to it by investing in those things that are the leading edge of what's possible."'"
The thing I'm more interested in is the chance of a private company putting the next person on the Moon. At this point, the only feasible industry is space tourism - there are no fusion reactors for the He-3, after all - but that might be enough. Virgin Galactic are expecting to be doing regular sub-orbital flights within a year or two, soon after that, they or someone else will start of orbital flights. That could be done in 5-10 years, quite easily. Getting from LEO to the Moon is easy compared to getting from the ground to LEO, so I would expect more than a few years for that.
If a private company tries, they could get to the Moon in 10-15 years, by my estimate, which could easily beat the various government projects (even assuming they stay on schedule, which we all know won't happen). The big question is whether or not any company will see the point in trying. I hope they do...
We can still claim a victory, even if our government gets beaten getting back to the moon. All we have to do is be the first nation with a private space industry to land on the moon, that's way cooler than having a government land there. We may need a 'permit to land on the moon,' but can you imagine what sort of permits a private company in China would need to land on the moon?
Demented But Determined.
I think the USA needs to invest big time in nuclear rockets, and at the same time, wrap up its Constellation program.
This is my sig.
The 21st century will be China's turn to be the world leader. All the talk and excuses we see here from Americans about how they don't care if China does beat us back to the moon is very much like what other countries said as they changed from being 1st rate to 2nd rate. Spain has had its turn, England, and now the U.S. is moving into China's eclipse. And of course we Americans will be able to lie to ourselves for quite a while that we're still the best "where it counts", just like the English and French and Spanish and all the others that were once great.